


Drawn Out

by NumptyPylon



Series: Rayllum 90s grade school [1]
Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: 5+1 Things, 90s grade school au, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempt at Humor, Banter, Best Friends, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, Slice of Life, oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28956696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NumptyPylon/pseuds/NumptyPylon
Summary: Sometimes, little doodles on post-its and spray paint on a skateboard and sharpie on a plaster cast... all come together to paint a picture.(5 drawings Callum made for his friend and 1 for his girlfriend)Illustrated oneshots, showing progression of a friendship and more, through Callum's drawings for Rayla, one a year from grades 2nd through 7th.---In chapter 5 (6th grade), Rayla is going away on an adventure, and Callum draws when he's upset
Relationships: Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Series: Rayllum 90s grade school [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123886
Comments: 123
Kudos: 114





	1. 2nd - Crayon

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote these for [my tumblr](https://numptypylon.tumblr.com/), and first couple are already posted there, but they turned out longer than I intended, so I thought I would post them as their own story rather than as one VERY long chapter of 'In the Middle'.
> 
> I'm really excited for this new kind of format, integrating my visual art in my writing in a new way, because the illustrations are PART of the story :)
> 
> I will still post Upside Downtime today, haha! It's not a replacement.
> 
>   
>    
> 

November 5th, 1993  
Katolis Public School, Vancouver BC

Rayla looked upset, and that just wasn’t right.

She had made _him_ less upset, had made him laugh when he was scared to present his paper to the class and given him thumbs up when he was up there and it had gone better than his wildest dreams because he had just looked at her while he was talking. And she had called him a dummy and it hadn’t felt mean, it had felt like… friendship? He hadn’t really been very good at making friends back in 1st grade, and just four days into being moved up into 2nd grade, he had made one without even trying.

He had been at her house and everything, he thought it counted, even though his step-dad had only brought him over there because he had been freaking out so much about her possible death after she didn’t come to school the day after she had cracked her forehead open on the monkey bars and they took her to the _hospital_ and… he really hated the hospital.

She had definitely not been dying, and had been right to call him a dummy for thinking she was, and she had just been to the emergency room for stitches, not the place where his mom had been.

Rayla hadn’t been very upset _then_ , when she was bleeding everywhere, but she looked upset _now,_ and that meant it had to be _worse_.

She hadn’t turned a page in the book they were supposed to be reading for ages.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Are you okay?”

“I’m still not dying, Callum,” she quipped, but it was like… not really her. Not all the way. It wasn’t really funny without the _her_ bit.

“Then, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” she hissed.

“It’s okay, Rayla,” he said. His dad had said that sometimes you just needed to listen, when other people were upset and had big feelings. “-if something _is_ wrong.”

“My parents are wrong!” she breathed out, angry but also relieved, he thought. “I haven’t seen them in ages… since it was winter. And I haven’t even talked to them in a really long time either. Not since my birthday. And they called yesterday, after I’d gone to bed early because my stupid head hurt, and just talked to Runaan and not me. Just needed to know I wasn’t dying, because they heard I messed up. I just have to not die and they’re happy. _You_ didn’t even know me, and you came over to see I was okay, and brought me a cute little pie and everything!”

That… _was_ worse. Jellytarts wouldn’t fix something like that.

She sniffed.

He really had to make it less horrible. Make her think about something nicer, maybe? Something she liked? He didn’t know her very well yet, she had mostly talked about ninjas and some Japanese show called Sailor Moon, with girls in tiny skirts that had superpowers.

She had been very excited, when she described her ideal superhero person that she would be if she was a superhero, which was like half-ninja and half sailor-girl from the show.

They all got a little pack of crayons, on their first day, and it was right there. He could read the book really quickly, anyway. Words were easy, just like little pictures. See them once, and he remembered. That’s why he was in 2nd grade and not 1st right now, anyway, the teacher had explained.

They had also explained that maybe after being moved up, he would be less bored and not be so inclined to draw during class, which was exactly what he was about to do, but pfft. It wasn’t a very good book, anyway. No dragons or magic or anything. Who wanted to read about people doing the boring things they already did every day, when you could read about dragons and wizards? Or sailor girl superhero-ninjas, that was also cool.

So Callum took out the crayons instead, and drew Rayla as a sailor girl superhero, with the black and green outfit and silver ribbons she had described and Rayla’s almost-white hair. Skin turned out kinda orange. Everyone drew _people,_ anyway, so why didn’t these dumb crayon packs ever come with any person-colored crayons?

But apart from that, it was pretty good. She just needed a name.

She was Rayla, obviously, but the sailor girls were all named Sailor-something.

Sailor Rayla? That sounded like a show for babies like Ez.

Sailor Ray? If Rayla shortened her name? He hadn’t asked her that, so it might be presumptuous.

Ooops. Presumptuous had not been a 1st grade word, using words like that made people call him a weirdo. And he had a feeling it wasn’t a 2nd grade word, either.

Sailor MoonRay? He kinda liked that one. It had ‘moon’ _and_ ‘Ray’ in it.

Yeah, it was cool, like Rayla.

He wrote carefully under his drawing with the black crayon.

**Sailor Moon Ray? Get it? Because you’re Rayla?**

He shyly slid it over to Rayla, looking away. Just because _he_ thought it was cool didn’t mean she would, people didn’t usually think the things he thought were cool were cool-

“That’s so _cool!”_ Rayla burst out, and she sounded _all_ happy and looked it too, when he turned around.

The teacher turned around to them too, because Rayla had not been very quiet about her excitement. Rayla was fast though, and flipped the paper and turned her gaze to the boring book, pretending she had been excited about Peter going to the store to buy milk.

The minute the teacher turned away again Rayla grabbed the purple crayon, and scribbled underneath what he had written, bouncing so much in her seat the writing kinda wobbled.

**Yes!!! But Sailor Moon shadow is cooler! Because I’m also a ninja!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: It's the school play, and Callum does Rayla's elf (fairy) face paint


	2. 3rd - Face Paint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's school play time, and Rayla needs some assassin-fairy face paint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and kudos'ed this story <3 I really appreciate it, especially since it's a new kinda format I'm trying out, both with the anthology narrative and the illustrations.
> 
> Next chapter! These are short, but some longer than others, this one took off a bit because I want to showcase some other characters, like Soren and Claudia.

May 31st, 1995  
Katolis Public School, Vancouver BC

“I want you to bring your own energy to the role,” Gren said, stepping onto the stage, positivity personified. “Rayla, you’re the fairy queen, but I know you can do those cool jumping kicks, so if you’re feeling a warrior queen kind of vibe, that’s cool! Shakespeare can be _cool-_ ”

“An assassin!” Rayla squealed, looking more excited than she had all day. “You said she could turn invisible! I could be the best assassin fairy ever! She turns invisible under the light of the full moon!” Rayla stood up, looking dramatically into the distance. “-and there’s a kinda… ‘ting’ and then-”

“I love it!” Gren said, although even his perpetual encouragement seemed to snag on the idea of an 8-and-5/6ths-year-old assassin on stage in front of lots of fussy parents. “A… _nice_ assassin though? Right? Too sweet to… you know-”

Rayla looked slightly disappointed that there would be no on-stage killing sprees, but nodded, looking thoughtful. “Okay. Titania is a good assassin. She was bound to murder the duke, but she refused, and they’re friends now.”

“Warrior bros!!!” Soren hollered, giving Rayla a side-hug that lifted her off the ground, and rather breaking character as the esteemed Duke Theseus of Athens.

Although since he was now named, Duke “The Swoosh” anyway (because Gren thought it would be… totally radical and the kids would love it, and also, Soren had butchered pronouncing his own character’s name so many times Gren had just rolled with it) and Soren also had a ‘shirtless and flexing, 100% of the time’ interpretation of what Ancient Greece was like, Callum thought authenticity was probably dying in a ditch with the victims of the fairy assassins.

“And you didn’t even _want_ to be in the play,” Callum laughed. “Now look at you, getting into fairy-assassin character.” He was sure glad _he_ had been drafted for prop making rather than anything where he would have to be up there.

“ _You_ try saying no to Gren,” Rayla defended, adjusting her horns, as Soren left to ‘improve morale’ among the stage crew. “He’s so… happy. It feels wrong.”

“I know, I spent all weekend making paper mâché horns, I very obviously can’t say no to Gren, either.”

Rayla pretty much already looked like an elf or a fairy on a normal day, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she actually looked _nice_ with plastic ivy in her hair and paper mâché horns.

So did Claudia, who was sitting down with them, but it was just a slightly different vibe, with those horns, on her. Like… fairy-chaos-demon. It fit her character, she really leaned into the chaotic, for Puck.

“Gren’s a witch,” Claudia said in explanation, very certain. “He sacrificed his hair for his powers, it’s an illusion now, that’s why it’s so red. He’s obviously evil inside, or he would _tell_ me how to become a witch and not keep it to himself! I asked him, like… a lot-”

“You didn’t want to be in the play either?” Callum was surprised at that, Claudia seemed to be made for the stage, he didn’t think she had ever felt embarrassed in her whole life.

“Nope,” Claudia said firmly. “Wanted to do lights. I would have gotten to just shoot magic beams in Soren’s face all night. Like a witch.”

“Yeah! Like a lightning wizard! Pew-pew!” That _did_ sound fun, Callum hadn’t thought of spotlight operator duty like _that._

“’Pew-pew?! Are you crazy?!” Claudia looked so intense that Callum backed away a bit. “Obviously, it’s more like ‘whoom-sssssss’! Like a corrupted sunbeam that can set fire to people! Fire is the second-best magic. Only dark powers are cooler.”

Claudia walked away to sit a little way away, looking disgusted with his choice in magic powers. She was handling her own face paint, anyway, because she had very definite ideas about her look that involved a lot of black.

Rayla was less confident, and had brought the palette of face paint over, and was decisively handing it to him. “You’re the best drawer here,” Rayla said, which definitely wasn’t the case, because he was only almost-8, and there was an 7th grade girl here who had painted the backdrop for the stage much nicer than he could have, but Rayla had said it like she was daring him to defy it.

And she trusted _him_ to make her look like an awesome assassin fairy before she was going up on that stage in front of everyone, even her parents who were back from Iraq for a bit.

She looked a bit bashful, when she positioned herself opposite him, and he didn’t get why until he _did._

It was weird, because he didn’t do a lot of looking at her face, normally. Of course, he _did,_ but not like _this_ , looking at it… deliberately. It was usually more like a backdrop, something that was just kinda there and he was used to.

But now, her face was really close, and he had to really look at it, to see where the paint should go. And he was seeing all kinds of things he didn’t usually think about, like the little line of paler skin half-covered by her hair from that failed monkey bar stunt the day they met, and the tiny freckles across her nose and her big, blue-grey eyes that looked almost purple in the stage lights.

She closed her eyes, and it made it easier but also… _not_ , that she wasn’t looking back at him anymore.

Rayla sat very still, which was extremely unusual for her, as he painted blue swooshes under her eyes and then little dots because the swooshes were too quickly finished and… he had never painted anyone’s face before and he wanted to keep going because…

It was… fun…?

No, ‘fun’ wasn’t the right word but… but whatever it was, he didn’t want it to be over in a… swoosh.

“Swoosh!” Soren’s extremely loud voice startled him out of the weird painty-trance.

“Not even ‘ _The_ Swoosh’, anymore?” Rayla asked, laughing, as she opened her eyes and broke the spell for good.

“Just ‘Swoosh’, is cleaner,” Soren said confidently. “Call me Swoosh, Duke of the Ancient Sheets.” He patted his sheet that was supposed to be a toga-thing, but it looked more like a loincloth, the way Soren had tied it “Gren approved it.”

Of course he did. Gren approved everything.

“Uh, Rayla?” Callum asked. “You wanna… get a mirror? The play’s about to start, and-“

But she shook her head, her smile pulling at the blue swooshes. “I trust you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overly enthusiastic director Gren amuses me, haha! Hope you enjoyed this fluffsplosion! They won't all be quite this gooey, haha! It's ups and downs, like life goes.
> 
> Up next: Callum enlists Crowmaster's help to make Rayla an assassin-skateboard for her 10th birthday


	3. 4th - Spray Paint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Rayla's 10th birthday, and Callum is making an assassin skateboard, with some help from resident emo disaster, Crowmaster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and kudos'ed on this! I really appreciate you all, it's always a bit nerve wracking to try a new kinda format like this :)
> 
> Hope you enjoy some gullible Callum and emo Crowmaster and sparkly assassin-wannabe Rayla!

July 30th, 1996  
Castle St, Vancouver BC

It was Rayla’s 10th birthday tomorrow, and she broke her skateboard… somehow, last week. She was lucky that was _all_ she broke, really.

It hadn’t been a very good skateboard, to be fair. Rayla had bought it from some kid at school for 3 dollars and a juicebox, because Runaan and Ethari did not have enough trust in her self-preservation skills to get her one, a sentiment Callum did understand, but Rayla would just buy another poopy secondhand one if no one else did.

And _he_ had a better one, his great-uncle had given him for his birthday two weeks ago, because he had offhandedly mentioned meeting Rayla at the skate park, _one_ time.

He had never used it, nor would he, because he fell over his own feet just _walking,_ never mind trying to balance on some wobbly thing moving on its own beneath you _._ And it was technically an expensive gift, except it didn’t feel right, giving her something he hadn’t gotten _for_ her but just had lying around. It wasn’t for her, it was meant for him or… not really that either, it was some ‘that’s what kids like, right?’ kinda present from someone who didn’t know him very well.

It had some kinda generic orange graffiti on it Rayla wouldn’t like. Rayla would want her dream skateboard to look like it belonged to a badass assassin, he knew, because she had told him exactly that. _This_ skateboard looked like it belonged to a guy named Bob or Peter, who was definitely not an assassin, but possibly an accountant riding his skateboard on the way to the store to buy milk, because according to the school books, that’s how guys named Peter spent their time.

Maybe he could change that, though? He obviously couldn’t make her a skateboard, but maybe he could make this one _hers._

First, the clothes’ wire he had used to drag Ez and Bait around the living room had to go.

Ez would understand. He had claimed Rayla as his much-cooler-than-Callum big sister ages ago, had started greeting her with toddler-tackle-hugs from around the third time she had come over after school, and had never stopped.

The skate park was just around the corner, and he was allowed to go there on his own, so he did. His step-dad was working, anyway, and Ez was busy pretending Bait was a magical color-changing toad with berry-scented burps. That last part was a real feat of imagination. _Nothing_ that grumpy little pug expelled was berry-scented or anything close.

Callum was in luck, because Crowmaster was at the skate park, and he was the nicest of all the 9th graders. He had let him and Rayla pet his little grey finch named ‘Crow’ for some reason, and shown Callum all his paint cans and told him the names of all the colors he hadn’t known.

“Crowmaster?” Callum asked, walking up to him.

Crowmaster painted skateboards with skulls and creepy dead roses and things, he knew. Really more Claudia’s thing than Rayla’s, but maybe he would let him use his paints? He didn’t think his watercolors would stick.

“You called me Crowmaster!” Crowmaster looked like he might cry.

“Uh, yeah? You said that was your name?”

“It _is!”_ Crowmaster said eagerly. “It is.”

“You’re lucky. It’s a really cool name. I like birds and flying. My name is just Callum though. I don’t think it means anything except… Soren says it means ‘dork alert’.”

“Your name means ‘sky’, or almost, anyway. That’s pretty cool. I write poetry in Latin, that’s how I know.”

Wow, Crowmaster was _so_ cool.

And he helped him unscrew the wheels from Rayla’s skateboard-to-be, which Callum hadn’t known you were supposed to do, and he let him use his tape and spray-paint without even taking the 2 dollars he had brought.

It was a pretty cool assassin skateboard, at the end, Callum thought. Even Crowmaster thought so, even though he thought skulls would have fit better than the lines and gradients Callum made. Assassins couldn’t just advertise that they were assassins though, that wouldn’t make any sense. It had to be subtler than skulls, for sure.

Yeah, it was nice. The more he looked at it, the more he liked it, which was good, because Rayla always looked at his drawings for a really long time.

“Is Crow named after the movie?” Oh, that was Rayla. Callum quickly jumped in front of the disassembled skateboard, the varnish still drying.

But she was petting Crow, and not paying too much attention.

“No,” Crowmaster said nervously. Rayla was a bit straightforward for his temperament, Callum thought. “After the bird. It’s a good movie though, I have the VHS. You seen it?” He looked a bit dubious, at that. Rayla _was_ wearing one of her sparklier Sailor Moon t-shirts today, you could be forgiven for thinking she wasn’t an aspiring assassin.

She _was_ though, just a very nice and flamboyant assassin who wouldn’t kill anyone, just be really good at it if she was so inclined. Which she was not. So no skulls, Callum was sure. Crowmaster didn’t have any sparkly paint because it didn’t really go with his aesthetic, or Callum would have used it.

“I’m not allowed to see it,” Rayla grumbled. Wow, it had to be really violent then, because as strict as Runaan was in many ways, he did not do much in the way of restricting the movies Rayla was allowed to watch. She knew more about garroting than any almost-10-year-old should, according to his step-dad. His aunt approved of her garroting knowledge, at least. “It ended Bruce Lee’s legacy and I’m not even allowed to watch it, just unfair-”

She cut off, looking over at Callum.

“You look happy,” she grinned. “Enjoying the last day we’re both 9? You know, tomorrow, I’ll leave you behind, alone in the sad, sad single digits for almost a whole year.”

…she _would._

He hadn’t thought of her birthday like _that._

She was already way taller than him, and wasn’t afraid to go down the halfpipe or do presentations in class and… And… people would notice how cool she was and invite her to parties and on dates and whatever 10-year-olds did and-

“Pffft, not like _that,_ dummy!” she laughed. “Ages are dumb, like the dumb ‘17’ on the back of the cover of ‘The Crow’ and-” She cocked her head at him, smiling very sweetly for an assassin, but normally, for a Rayla. “And you’re here… right? And _I’m_ not going anywhere, I can be _really_ immature, Runaan says so himself!”

Yeah… yeah.

When Rayla would inevitably borrow Crowmaster’s VHS tapes and traumatize herself and need two hours of Pingu before she could sleep… he’d be there. With her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowmaster is not cool. No one but Callum thinks he's cool. His real name is Peter, and he bought milk on his way home from the skate park. His entire life is continual failure at being edgy XD
> 
> Up next: Callum tries to make Rayla's dumb, itchy cast look nicer and comfort someone who's definitely not upset at all


	4. 5th - Markers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rayla breaks more than her skateboard and Callum has to comfort someone who's not upset at all, definitely not

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone who's commented and kudos'ed on this story! I realize it's maybe a bit of a niche concept, but I really enjoy writing it and integrating the story and my visual art, so it means a lot to hear some of you enjoy it :)
> 
> Now for the least fluffy installment of this, sorry :'(

April 8th, 1997  
Spire General Hospital, Vancouver BC

“It’s dumb. Heavy. Itchy.” Rayla looked defensively off to the side.

It was painful, Callum thought. She was biting her lip, tense and curled around herself, her good hand clenching around her elbow where the cast ended.

He had never broken anything so he didn’t know what it felt like, but… her right knee was pretty badly scraped and definitely looked like it should hurt, but she hadn’t even _noticed_ until he had pointed it out.

And he knew _Rayla,_ and she didn’t cry when she got hurt and _always_ got back up again. And she _hadn’t_ gotten back up and maybe hadn’t cried _exactly_ but _had_ made little horrible gasping whimpers when he had helped her off the ground.

And she had been so close to actually crying that he thought it ought to count, when Ethari had turned his back to rummage through their freezer for frozen peas to wrap around her arm. He had tried to comfort her, but Rayla had been very insistent that she was only upset because she wanted to _eat_ the peas and Ethari was so cruelly refusing to use the broccoli instead.

And you didn’t really comfort people because of peas. That wasn’t a thing, he was pretty sure. Even if they were really bad actors and it definitely wasn’t _really_ about peas.

“Hey!” Callum said, scrambling a bit, trying to find a bright side. It was usually Rayla who made jokes about things that weren’t that funny. “At least you won’t have to do the dishes for a whole month, since you can’t get the cast wet!”

She didn’t look any happier, just snorted. “Yeah. Awesome. Runaan won’t want me to get rewarded for being dumb and ruining his chances at the Spring Tournament, so place your bet now whether he’ll keep a list of all the dishes I owe for when it comes off or find some replacement chore I hate even more.”

Behind Rayla, Callum saw that Ethari had returned from the hospital vending machines with sodas, and stopped in his tracks when he heard that. Ethari was really nice, and Callum didn’t want him to be upset like he was now, but a hard, angry part inside of him was happy he had heard it. It wasn’t right, the way Rayla felt like she failed, every time things went wrong.

It wasn’t like he _disagreed_ that it had been dumb, trying that jump when the asphalt had been wet and she hadn’t worn any of her gear, but… she was _hurt,_ and that completely overrode the dumb. It wasn’t okay she should be this upset on top of being hurt, he knew _that._

Rayla looked miserably down at the bag of peas still in her lap for a few seconds, then started angrily tearing at it. But it wasn’t really very easy to open those kinds of bags without scissors with _two_ good hands, much less one.

She hiccupped wetly.

“Rayla, come here-” Ethari said gently, reaching for her, but she tore away from him, and then managed to tear the bag open with her teeth.

“See! I could do it!” she protested, her face screwing up in a not-crying-face that was almost worse than actual crying.

Sniffling, she defiantly stuffed a handful of now-thawed peas into her mouth.

“Rayla, don’t do that,” Ethari said. “I’ll cook them for you when we get home, we won’t throw out the peas, okay my little savage?”

“With… b-butter?” she blubbered miserably. “And… and garlic?”

“Yes,” Ethari said, very firmly. Even firmer than he had been about not using the inferior-icepack broccoli, which was saying something, because he had been _very_ firm about that. This… might not be about peas either. “And… I’ll talk to Runaan. Before we get home.” Yeah. Not about peas.

Rayla sobbed out loud, but there was a bit of relief in it, he thought, and she didn’t pull away this time, when Ethari reached for her.

She was crying by _every_ definition now, and looked so small in Ethari’s arms that Callum wanted to cry too.

She stopped, after what felt like a really long time, but maybe it just felt like a long time because it was so horrible.

And Ethari drew away, because he needed to go to the hospital payphone to call Runaan, and wiped her wet cheeks and kissed her forehead and Rayla didn’t even make a face, even though it was in public and she was almost 10 and 3/4 which was almost 11.

Ethari’s big hand touched the top of Callum’s head before he left like… asking him to watch over her while he was gone, but not with his voice because Rayla would balk at that.

But Callum understood, and straightened up. It was _important._

And it was starting _now_ , because Rayla was glancing nervously at where Ethari was talking and… really needed a distraction.

He had a black sharpie in his in his backpack, and there was a whiteboard in the waiting room with lots more colors of markers, and Rayla liked his drawings to an irrational degree so… he could make the dumb itchy cast look nicer, maybe?

It was white, anyway, and was not going to _stay_ white for a whole month. Rayla wasn’t allowed white clothes, Runaan had said, until she ‘stopped treating them like rock stars treat hotel rooms’.

“What do you want?” Callum asked, holding up the markers. “Like… a cool robot cyborg arm?”

_Why?!_

There was _no_ way he could actually draw that, he liked drawing animals and people and plants, not battle robots! Why would he offer that?! Especially since Rayla would have to look at it for a whole month! And she had way too much faith in him, she probably believed he _could_ draw a cool-looking robot cyborg arm! And _he_ had known it was dumb to try that jump and he hadn’t said, because he… thought she could do _anything_ and-

Rayla reached out with her good hand, to squeeze his.

“Flowers,” she said, tapping his nose to make him look up at her face. Her eyelashes were still wet and the pale skin reddened and swollen around her eyes and there were scrapes on her chin from the asphalt, but her smile was… very sweet, like it was sometimes, and like _she_ was, _all_ the time. She was good and brave, and even when she was hurting she noticed he had panicked about something that didn’t matter very much. “Anemones. But definitely not the sea kind. The wood kind. I showed them to you, remember?”

But she knew he always remembered. They didn’t grow here but were everywhere in Scotland where she was from, and she had shown him pictures of where she used to live, a little house in woods, surrounded by a whole field of them, little white stars covering the forest floor.

The sharpie was too thick. It didn’t really work for delicate little flowers. And the curve and the surface of the plaster was making it even harder. And the green whiteboard marker he used for the leaves didn’t stick properly, and smeared.

He drew them anyway, covering the place on the cast where the bone was broken underneath it. He had seen the x-ray and Rayla’s arm, and he remembered.

It was dumb, that thought… _wish…_ that his badly-drawn flowers could protect her while she healed.

“They’re perfect,” Rayla said, running her fingers over the very imperfect flowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it, even though it was peak angst for this series! Life is ups and downs :)
> 
> If you want some GOOD Rayla and Runaan feels as a bandaid on this chapter, the Christmas chapter of [In the Middle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27388696/chapters/66935749) (same continuity as this story) has you covered.


	5. 6th - Ballpoint Pen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rayla is going away for a while, and Callum draws when he's upset

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's followed this story so far, I really appreciate your feedback :)
> 
> Now for some drawing when upset, but it's MILD upset, I promise! It's my favorite illustration by far, but was kinda hard to write for, because I don't really feel it NEEDS a story to go with it. But here goes, and I hope you enjoy!

October 21st, 1997  
Vancouver International Airport

Callum had bought sticky-notes in the little airport bookshop, because they were cool sticky-notes in all kinds of colors, not just yellow, and he was doodling on them now, because he didn’t have any other paper and just a ballpoint pen the ticket lady had lent him and…

And he drew when he was upset.

He knew he shouldn’t be, that it was a _good_ thing, getting to go all the way to Japan.

Definitely a nice thing.

Callum was happy for Rayla, really.

It was only a month anyway, not like that was… ages and ages.

“You draw when you’re upset,” Rayla said, skootching up next to him.

“I’m… I’ll be okay.”

“Mmmhmm,” Rayla hummed, unconvinced.

Of course she could probably figure out as well as he could, what his first four years of school would have been like without Rayla to make him laugh when he was anxious about a presentation and defend him from bullies twice her size and hug him in the toilets when he missed his mom.

“You’ll get to see all this cool stuff. And eat noodles every day if you want. And you can buy Sailor Moon stuff in just regular stores, I bet. It’ll be… like an adventure.” He was really failing at sounding excited, so he should probably just… stop.

Rayla headbutted his shoulder insistently, until he looked up from his lap.

“I can’t just go on an adventure without stuff,” she said. “You need stuff, for adventuring, all the books say so. At least a magic sword or two.” She grinned up at him, pointedly nodding at the post-its.

A magic sword? It should be a flippy-out one that changed shape so she could use it to climb up buildings like the ninja-adventurer she would definitely be, if she was an adventurer.

She really needed _two_ swords though… if she was using them for ninja-climbing buildings-

“And a cool animal companion,” Rayla added. “A floofy, cuddly one.” So it could be a comfy pillow for her, because the plane ride was _ten_ hours, she would be so far away- “Like a big cat, with glowy horns.” Oh, that _was_ cool, and Rayla had a white glitter gel pen that would be perfect for glowy horns-

“A Callum,” Rayla added. “I… wish I could bring a Callum.”

Callum had to stop drawing, because Rayla squeezed him really hard. She put her head on his shoulder, briefly, before remembering that she was a fearless adventurer and drew back to rummage through her bag, not looking at him.

She pulled out a purple felt-tipped pen and the white gel pen he had been wanting to ask her for.

“I’ll… draw a Callum,” she said, determined. “You draw a bottle of magic moonberry juice. It has super nutrients, so I don’t need to eat anything.”

That wasn’t really how nutrients worked, even if they _were_ super, just… replacing calories, but… it was a story. Like moonberry juice itself, because Ez was really into plants and animals and had said the ‘moonberry bush’ in Rayla’s garden was actually something called Aronia. So that was a story too, probably to get Rayla to drink her healthy juice when she was little.

Like an illusion. A nice one.

He was done too soon, it was pretty quick to draw moonberry juice.

Rayla was still drawing a Callum, bent in concentration over the post-it. She always tried really hard at things, even when she wasn’t good at them. She made him want to try harder too. And he would go to school tomorrow and she wouldn’t be next to him and he would just sit there and read about Peter and his boring, milk-buying life and-

-and Rayla was looking at him and not her drawing. “I think I do need food, now that I think about it,” she said.

Yeah… yeah, she did. She needed jellytarts. Ez would never forgive him if he sent his claimed-big-sister off on an adventure without jellytarts…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last one of these, kinda! This is 6th grade, so the next time you see them in this continuity is the first chapter of 'In the Middle', where they've just started 7th grade.
> 
> There WILL be another chapter though, taking place during the Christmas chapter of In the Middle.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed seeing them grow up together <3
> 
> Up next: ([In the Middle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27388696/chapters/66935749), chapters 1-3, if you're reading chronologically. It's not necessary to read In the Middle to follow this story though) 7th grade - Colored Pencils, Callum is drawing a Christmas card for his not-just-friend that he's not allowed to call his girlfriend because Runaan has some opinions about that :D

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I'll post more in not too long, since the first 3 are fully written.


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